She brought herself near to tears with these gloomy broodings. She looked out of a window across the Rue Auber, where a sign caught her eye; it said “Canada Furs”, and suddenly she was sick with longing for the cold, clean, remorseless land of her birth. Why had she ever come away, to get herself into this mess?

Luncheon raised her spirits, and she was a little surprised to discern that what she had really been thinking about, and longing for, was immortality—and a vain, earthly immortality at that, the very kind of thing which the Thirteeners (who were in no great danger of attaining it) condemned so strongly.

Ah, the Thirteeners! After that shaking hour in the Sheldonian, when she had sung her seven bars, and felt herself sealed of the seal of Bach, she could no longer be one of them. But what, then, was she? A whirligig, like Domdaniel, who confessed that he took the colour of whatever work he was engaged on at the moment? But that was unjust to a man whom the world called great, and who was certainly the greatest man in every way that she had ever met. It was, indeed, a moral judgement. And what was it that Domdaniel had said to her, on that drive from Oxford, concerning her own harsh judgement on herself?—”Moral judgements belong to God, and it is part of God’s mercy that we do not have to undertake that heavy part of His work, even when the judgement concerns ourselves.” But wasn’t that just gas? If you didn’t make moral judgements, what were you? Well, of course Domdaniel said that you were an adult human being, and as such ought to have some clear notion of what you were doing with your life. Clarity, always clarity. The more she puzzled, the less clear anything became.

Reflection, even on these somewhat elementary lines, was hard work for Monica, and it made her very hungry. After her lunch, she continued her wandering through familiar tourist sights, putting in time until she should meet Amy again, and return to St Cloud. Her wanderings took her to the Panthéon.

A vivid imagination is not of great use in the Pantheon, unless one knows much of the earthly history of the great ones who lie buried there, and can summon splendid visions of them to warm the grey, courteous unfriendliness of its barren stones. In spite of Amy’s cramming, Voltaire was not a living name to Monica, nor was Balzac, or any of the others who gave the place meaning, and everywhere the bleak, naked horror of enthroned Reason was ghastly palpable. Within five minutes she had left the place, and wandered on a few paces into the church of St Étienne du Mont.

All she knew of this church was that it possessed a remarkable rood-screen which Amy, stuffing her charges with culture like Strasbourg geese, had insisted that she see and admire. And there it was, its two lovely staircases twining upward toward a balcony surrounding the High Altar; Monica, as upon her first visit, longed to climb one of them and look down into the church; she yearned, for no reason that she could define, to see that balcony filled with singing, trumpeting, viol-playing angels. She sat down in a corner, and stared, trying to see what existed only in her imagination.

She saw no musical angels, but she became conscious of the windows, so strong and jewel-like in colour. She was warmed and soothed by the dark splendour, and some of the pain in her head—the fullness and muddle—began to go away. She hated thinking, and was ashamed of hating it. But thought was like the Panthéon. Here was feeling, and feeling was reality. If only life could be lived in terms of those windows, of that aspiring, but not frightening, screen! If only things and feelings existed, and thoughts and judgements did not have to trouble and torture!

She was conscious of movement and sound nearby, but it was not for some time that she looked to see what it was. Quite close was a canopy, not very high, of stone, under which was a tomb, not particularly impressive. A grille surrounded it, but an old woman was reaching through this fence, as she knelt, and as she prayed she rubbed the stone gently with her arthritic hand. Tears stood in her eyes, but did not fall. A Negro came near, knelt until he was almost prostrate, prayed briefly, and left.

What could it be? Monica found a sacristan, and soon had her answer. It was the tomb of St Genevieve, the patroness of the city of Paris.

“Formerly in the Panthéon,” said the man, “but it was taken from there and publicly burned when the church was re-dedicated to Reason; the ashes and relics were brought here when all that foolishness was over.”

Then, in the darkness beneath the canopy, there was something of a saint? A saint who had found a haven here after the persecutions of Reason? She had never considered saints before. But, with a sense of awe and wonder that she had never known, Monica went to the tomb and, when no one was near, knelt and stretched her hand through the grille.

“Help me,” she prayed, touching the smooth stone, “I can’t think; I can’t clarify; I don’t know what I want. Help me to do what is right—No! Help me—help me—.” She could not put any ending on her supplication, for none would express what she wanted, because she did not know what she wanted.

Nevertheless, when she met Amy at the end of the afternoon, she seemed in splendid spirits, and Amy was convinced that she was forgetting Giles Revelstoke, and that the whole thing had been one of those fusses about very little, which were so common among girls who matured late.

Within three hours of her return to London, Monica was at the flat in Tite Street; her excuse was that it was hopeless to try to reach Revelstoke by telephone, and she must make her own arrangement about future lessons, or else give an embarrassing explanation to Domdaniel. Giles greeted her more warmly than he had ever done.

“I’ve something that I think you’ll like,” said he, handing her a bundle of music paper. It was a solo cantata for a soprano voice with piano accompaniment. She looked quickly through it; the manner was very much his own—the old solo cantata form, recitatives alternating with melodic passages, but in a modern idiom; she saw immediately that the tessitura of the lyric passages was unusually high and that the recitatives lay in a lower register. Yet it was for one voice.

“You haven’t looked at the title,” he said.

It read:

“A present,” said he. “We’ll work on it, and you’ll sing it the first time it’s heard which, if my plans don’t fall through, will be quite early next autumn—Third Programme again.”

She did not dare to ask if this were an amends for the quarrel before Easter. And what did it matter? She did not dare to ask if this meant that he loved her; even that did not seem to matter, now. The great fact was that he was in better spirits than she had ever known, and that they were to work together again. On something written specially for me—it was that voice which she had heard within herself before, that voice of which she was afraid, because it spoke so selfishly and so powerfully.

But—Oh, Saint Genevieve, was this your doing?

“There’s another thing,” said Giles. “I’ve been approached—only approached, mind you—by the Association for English Opera; they wanted to know if I had anything in their line. It was Discoverie that interested them; they were very complimentary.”

“Giles!”

“Yes, I know. I can’t tell you what it was like, talking about it to people who really knew, and could understand what was implicit in it, as well as what was staring out of the score. The upshot of it was, they want something. Now don’t go off the deep end, because it’s all very tentative. I haven’t anything—not on paper—but I’ve been tinkering with a notion for years. So I’m to make a sketch, and rough out some of the scenes, and they’ll hear it. Wait, wait—don’t exult too much; there’s a sticker even if they like it. They’re broke. They can’t commission a new work, but they can do one if it’s up to standard. Production here; perhaps production in Venice. But I don’t see how it’s to be done.”